Opening weblink in OS (lil complex one)

Question

Is there a way to find if a link is already running in the OS(Windows or Linux or watever on which i run the program)?
My requirement is quite diff. Consider IE for example. If the same url is requested to be opened from the user i need to first check if theres a IE window already for this link. if not a new one has to be launched else same window should be brought to focus.
The client i am using is Swing. Currently i am using Runtime.exec() to launch the web browser every time it is required. But it opens a new browser (or a new tab in newer versions of IE) to launch the link.
But i need to first check if theres a IE window already opened with the same link. If no i need to continue launching a new browser else i should bring up the already open IE window with the same link, to focus.
I studied from some where that using Socket connection to the OS itself this can be achieved but nothing was specified on how it could be done so.
Edited by: shrirama on Oct 15, 2008 10:17 PM

Answer 1

shrirama wrote:
Is there a way to find if a link is already running in the OS(Windows or Linux or watever on which i run the program)?Not natively in Java.
Whatever solution you find, if one even exists and that's at the very least highly questionable, it will be both platform and browser dependent
You need to think of a better way to do this. I would start by dropping the Runtime.exec bit which is totally unneccessary.